I think 2023 is heating up to be the most polarised election in modern memory.
The echo chamber effect of politics via social media means everyone you don’t agree with has either been blocked or muted ensuring the most radical voices are amplified and the polarisation intensifies when the political bubbles realise what the polices of the others are.
That means 2023 will be a true idealogical battle between a National/ACT Government and a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government.
These Governments will be forced to be far more ideologically extreme than Labour or National will want to be and it will create vast shockwaves from either side.
One could argue that centrist NZ will avoid this by voting National or Labour, but the economic carnage that is looming now means extremism will be fed and manufactured by the lived experience of people in economic and social pain.
Shit is about to get cray cray and people will lose their minds, add economic insecurity into that and you have the perfect cocktail for frenetic engagement rather than measured reason.
Look, the economy c-o-u-l-d keep spluttering on, but surely that resilience every economist points to was only so resilient because the Government pumped billions into the economy in the form of the wage subsidy program.
Now we face the economic turmoil of a global economy that has printed $25Trillion dollars since 2008 to prevent an international economic meltdown which has artificially created the lowest interest rates for 5000 years!
You have to go back to fucking Mesopotamia for interest rates this low!
I don’t have a PHD in monetary theory, but I’m not sure raising interest rates that gives all that debt gravity as a means to slow spending will counter inflation if it’s being driven by Supply side dynamics, not Demand side dynamics.
Halting the speed of money flow is counter productive if Kiwis don’t have any money to start with. Prices are skyrocketing because of international inflationary pressures exacerbated by a global financial market pumped full of printed money. If Supply side dynamics are driving the inflation, cutting back consumer spending will tilt the economy into a steep recession, which will quickly become a depression when prices continue to climb because of scarcity.
What I’m saying is we be fucked and that fuckedness is going to drive the electorate into a frenzy of anger, fear and economic hurt.
Oh and the climate crisis, don’t forget the food prices are being pumped up because the global agricultural calendar has now been so interrupted by a 2 year mega drought that we will see large scale famine this year.
So into such a maelstrom of issues, how will each Government block react?
National/ACT Government:
The fundamental problem for the National/ACT Government is Christopher Luxon.
What you need to appreciate about Christopher is that his evangelical prosperity theology means his 7 properties is proof positive that Jesus loves him.
His CEO routine can do the 45 second sound bite, but time and time and time again his total lack of intellectual curiosity has him blunder policy that he has to walk back 24 hours later.
That’s not a handicap for winning because National are selling his enormous self certainty to a frightened and uneasy electorate. The problem won’t be winning and sticking to a very bland script, the problem will be the total implementation of hard right ACT policy David Seymour will be able to force pass Luxon who sees things like policy as something the little people do.
Christopher loves the first class passengers and who he wants to get working class he talks to the pilots and first class cabin staff, but those who can’t afford to fly God Airways is a bottom feeder.
This means the yellow quick fox will jump all over the lazy blue log and National will be held to ransom by a jubilant Seymour who will see amputating the State as his final gift to Milton Friedman so he can hand on heart tell Satan that he fulfilled his obligations to the free market so he can finally resign from politics and make some real money in the private sector.
Seymour is very funny, very charismatic and a very clever politician who is at the peak of his political powers, he runs circles around Christian Lex Luther and Nicola Willis and will campaign so magnificently in comparison I think ACTs Auckland vote could generate an overhang via MMP. ACT have every reason to feel a double digit election result is theirs for the taking.
Watch for some crazy reversal of the gun laws as well. And abortion laws. Everything will be on the table if National and ACT form a Government.
Labour/Green/Maori Party Government:
The rule of NZ politics is that you literally have to bang Labour’s head against a wall and put a gun in their mouth before they ever agree to implement meaningful change that challenges neoliberalism.
Labour are the moderate management team who take over once National have fucked up.
Any radical revolutionary zeal was drained inside Labour once their activist base became middle class marxists. If you want Labour to be transformative, you have to literally force them to.
To appeal to those in pain who have been promised the world and delivered a cold Uber eats, the left block must promise radical change within the first 100 days of the new Labour/Green/Māori Party Government.
This will require the Greens and the Maori Party working together to put a list of bottom lines that must be passed within 100 days to generate the urgency that is required to make previous Labour voters believes again.
The Māori Party and Greens must save Jacinda from her and Grant’s innate caution.
The problem is the Māori Party necessity to form 51% will be used by the Right to cause more divisiveness in the campaign. They urgently need to stop dumb forced errors to prevent handing the Right ammunition. John Tamihere’s leadership and discipline is urgently required behind the scenes to ensure that.
The Greens should make their move against James Shaw as quickly as possible so as to blood Chloe before the campaign proper starts and be clear that they tactically will use bottom lines negotiated with the Maori Party to force immediate change that will be passed within 100 days.
If they can’t present an urgent united front with clearly defined goals to win back hope for change, then they will be forced to play the same scare tactics the Right will and use fear of the ACT/National agenda to grudge vote for the Left again.
Curveball:
The curveball here is Winston and NZ First, if he gets over 5%, he will be the Kingmaker and Trevor Mallard’s bizarre desire to trespass an institution like Winston will sow a bitter harvest at negotiation time.
Winston could bring a genuine isolationist stance to NZ politics by reviving Muldoon’s Think Big anti-free market economic sovereignty. At a time of global financial collapse, economic nationalism will be extremely populist.
Conclusion:
It’s the economy stupid.
If the economy falters as badly as it likely to, we will trigger a whole bunch of social tipping points that all have the potential to explode and cause considerable damage.
I do not believe we are ready for this jelly.
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It’s society. And if society crashes, then the economy is going straight after.
“Oh and the climate crisis, don’t forget the food prices are being pumped up because the global agricultural calendar has now been so interrupted by a 2 year mega drought that we will see large scale famine this year.”
In addition Russia is the world’s largest and Ukraine is the fifth largest exporter of wheat, expect much of that to be not get out. Fertiliser is impacted too. There was already a shortage but Nitrogen fertiliser requires natural gas so much of European manufacturing is now suspended because high gas prices make in too costly. 40% of Potash comes from Russia and Belarus, a lot of that will not get out either. Finally China, the worlds largest Phosphate fertiliser supplier has banned exports.
Food has inelastic demand so even small disruptions cause immense pain. Now we can expect a fall in global agricultural yields compounded by drought, shortage of fertiliser, supply chain disruption and conflict.
This will cause further price rises and make food and fertiliser less available and affordable for poorer countries, farmers and people that rely most heavily on imports.
While the Russian/Ukraine situation will have an impact there has been an all time record grain harvest in Australia and India and no drop in overall global production. There’s always somewhere having a drought – not sure a two year event qualifies as a mega drought or about the claimed connection to climate change. In fact the world is getting greener and more productive according to NASA.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
Winston won’t go with Ardern after the twin insults of He Puapua and the tresspass notice. The people he had a beef with in the National Caucus are gone.
Recessions never favour the incumbent. Labour will likely get a real flogging come 2023 and I’m still thinking Ardern won’t be there as she is about as polarising as Trump and the sheeple will blame the government for their overgeared housing and inadequate savings.
Not looking forward to Te Reo Luxon in 2023 unless Act get a high teens vote….
Sorry Frankie, no chance. National still has Collins and Brownstains and ACT has the Twerker , none can stand Winston and vice versa. The only chance for National is ACT and their policies are so corrosive, it’ll take more than a ” dead people can’t vote” cup of tea deal to create accord.
But Winstone won’t get back in he has has his days.
Quite correct Covid, he is no chance.
” I do not believe we are ready for this jelly. ”
Those that work from home with full pay and a pretend sense of safety in their little home prisons are ready for absolutely nothing, they are doing their best to hide away from the world, the same world in which others already are knee deep in the jelly.
Lol, for those of the essential workers, the nurses, the cops, the fire figthers etc, all those that have to work in the real physical world, the day that the jelly splats all over the walls can’t come soon enough. Right now all we do is drag a zombie corpse of pretend NZ along with us. A nation of great pretenders.
What a legacy, Labour 2023 – not quite as shite as the others. But if you look closely and scratch the surface you find that we will be worse.
Well done Jacinda and your team of turdblossoms.
You get wonderful colourful blossoms on turds, whereas bratwursts are full of arse sphincters, offal, lips and eyeballs…..juz sayin loike
Winston is the answer ‘Stupid!’
Why? Because the other options are stupid.
Let’s get to the purge! Quickly!
Let us have a hung parliament. Followed by a minority government and a quick succession of an election or two within 18 months.
This country is munted if we continue on down this neoliberal neocon bipolar world order with the US on one side and the BRIC+40 on the other.
All the money printed won’t mean anything with what will happen if we go down that path.
NZ will probably be ‘forced’ to declare War on China in the South Pacific by the US!
And doctor Cindy will most likely oblige just to get another honorary doctorate!
Also. The gweens must die.
Agree 100% Denny
Your “they lied to us” graphic, sums up how most politicians & parties get elected in NZ, the 4th Labour Government may have pushed that device to new heights, but it has always been the theme for NZ politicians & unless something major changes, will continue into the future, much to ordinary New Zealanders detriment.
The long and short of it is: They all suck! Democracy fails when not a single party or combination of parties genuinely represents those they are supposed to govern over. It’s happening all over the world btw. Buckle up, it’s going to get really ugly.
They could promise change but would struggle to be believed by everyone that heard them do that last time.
I’m voting ACT. The only party that will make NZ a better society!
ACT does not believe in society.
Every man for himself is their mantra.
I am alright Jack
There is no party in NZ that deserves to govern given all their track records of fucking us over. Repeatedly. We are the living equivalent of battered wife syndrome, Stockhausen syndrome and every type of abuse and neglect you care to name.
A new political entity is sorely needed. One that rejects globalisation, corporatism, neolib economics and starts redressing the imbalance of power from the haves to the have not’s.
“That means 2023 will be a true idealogical battle between a National/ACT Government and a Labour/Green/Māori Party Government.”
I hope so. NZ needs this new paradigm resolved as much as it needed the one sorted out in 1984.
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